Winter Cardinal tutorial preview

Isn’t he lovely? I really hope you will enjoy this painting as much as I did. The tutorial is divided into several parts, in each part as always I describe step by step the whole process. I started from the background snow, because this is the lightest elemnt in the whole painting. I wanted to create the base for the subsequent darker layers. After establishing the shadows on the snow I added some blurred pine needles in the background, which helps to create an impression of depth and distance. When the background was finished I focused on the pine needles. After adding them and having the dark tones in place I adjusted the tonal values of the snow. Then I moved on to paint the pine cones, I started from applying a light brown wash over the entire pine cone, then I applied the darkest tones. The next step was to add some details and I finished everything with the last unifying glaze. Then I applied several layers on the cardinal in order to achieve a rich red color and after adding some details I could finish the whole painting with white falling snow which created a nice winter feeling.